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Tuesday, March 5, 2013

TWD: Miniature Croissants

I am going to preface this post by declaring that the recipe for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie was a royal pain in the butt. I simply hated this recipe from the get-go and I think my bad attitude completely spoiled the process of making croissants for the first time. As much as I was looking forward to flexing my baking skills by making these babies, I chose to start them at a time where I was emotionally and mentally in a bit of a frazzled state.

You see, I am getting very nervous about the upcoming labor and delivery of our new baby. In addition to the natural stress that accompanies having to face giving birth again, I am also in the midst of organizing, cleaning, and prepping for welcoming our newborn baby girl. The day I intended to start the croissant dough was a day that I had decided to completely dedicate to home projects. I had planned on starting the dough, hauling up the bins of baby clothes from the basement, and then sifting and organizing through Matthew's old sleepers and outfits to try to find the ones that were gender neutral (among other chores and activities).

So, I started the dough the night before and that did not take much time and was relatively easy. The next day, I went to get the clothes up from the basement before turning the dough for the first time. After rummaging through the boxes for a decent amount of time, I realized that our baby girl has approximately four outfits that are devoid of dinosaurs, choo-choo trains, frogs, and bold lettering proclaiming "Mommy's Handsome Guy." And they are all lime green in color.

Thus, I began to stress. I do not have any clothes for my daughter - what a horrible Mother I am! I made lists and plans to shop for last minute baby items, all the while making note of how much time I had based on when the dang croissant dough had to be rolled out again. The following day became a never-ending dance of running back and forth between various stores and the house as I continued with my last minute baby preparations. Then I realized that I had timed myself horribly with the croissants and would not be baking them until 10:00 pm. And I was ready to collapse by 5:00 pm.

I hated those croissants before I even had the chance to try them.

On top of that, rolling them out proved to be quite difficult for me. My arms for some reason had something against me, because I had a rough time getting them to work hard enough to get that dough as thin as it needed to be. I dreaded every turn of the dough because I knew it would be another unwanted workout for my upper body (and I was remarkably sore the next day!). Like I said, I had a bad attitude.

I ended up cutting the croissants way smaller than they needed to be as well, which resulted in about 40 mini-croissants instead of the 22 larger croissants the recipe was supposed to yield. I had issues with my dough tearing a bit as a stretched it, which was also majorly annoying. My dough also did not appear to rise very well once shaped, although it did become spongy in appearance as indicated in the recipe. Once they were baked, it was 10:45 at night and I was just too beat to wait for them to cool down so I could give them a taste. So I let them sit out overnight on the cooling rack. Matthew was the first one up in the morning, and he waddled downstairs and promptly helped himself to a couple of them. He seemed to enjoy them. He even tried feeding one to the cat. That was a no-go.

As for Paul and I? We were not wowed by them in the least. To me, they just tasted like biting into a stick of butter. I was kind of hoping for something with a little bit more complexity in flavor, but the only flavor I got was butter. Paul agreed...and he really, really likes butter. For such a long, irritating recipe, the results were simply underwhelming.

Thanks to our host Amanda for typing up this recipe in its entirety and posting it on her blog!

Kudos to you for even attempting this recipe with so much going on! I know the feeling of hard work to only come out mediocre - not fun. They do look good! Now that this is over you can concentrate on more important tasks! Congratulations on your upcoming delivery!!